Илона Эндрюс - Emerald Blaze (Hidden Legacy)

Except for Shadow.

I made a beeline for the fridge. Replenishing magic burned a lot of calories, and my stomach had turned into a black hole swirling with acid. I’d missed dinner but there would be leftovers. There were always leftovers.

The fridge offered me Mom’s fajitas. It was a simple recipe, marinated skirt steak or chicken thighs chopped into bite-sized pieces and wrapped in flour tortillas with cheese, chunks of tomato and avocado, and mild sauce. They kept surprisingly well, were good hot or cold, and everyone in the family liked them. Mom must have made a ton, because the platter held at least a dozen, wrapped in plastic so the fridge wouldn’t dry them out.

I pried the plastic open, snagged a fajita, and closed the fridge. Nevada stood three feet away. I jumped and dropped the fajita. Shadow darted across the floor, scooped up the fajita, and bolted down the hallway.

I swore. “Make some noise next time, please.”

Nevada crossed her arms over her chest.

Uh-oh. I knew that look. That was the you-are-doomed look.

“Albert called,” my sister said.

I opened the fridge and took out a Corona. “What did he say?”

“He wants to talk. He says he knows he fucked up, but he thinks there’s still a chance, despite all the threats. He wants an opportunity to apologize.”

I opened the beer and took a long swallow. I barely tasted it, but it was cold, and that was enough. “He has nothing to apologize for.”

“He thinks he does.”

I tried to get past her to the table, but she stayed where she was, trapping me between the island and the fridge. I had a feeling that if I turned around and circled the island, she would just step to the side and block my way again.

“Initially I thought he might have threatened you,” she said.

“Albert?”

“Yes. But after five minutes of his apologizing, I realized that he wouldn’t have, which means you threatened him. I asked Bern to trace your phone route.”

Crap. I drank more beer.

“You went to see her. Then you went straight to Albert’s house. Now he wants to apologize. His exact words were ‘beg forgiveness.’”

Technically, all of that was accurate.

“What did she make you do?”

I couldn’t lie and say going to see Albert was my idea. “That’s between me and her.” The less Nevada was involved, the safer it was.

My sister’s eyes blazed. “I told you to stop talking to her. I warned you. I know you think she’s some sort of mentor, but you have no idea how dangerous she is. She told you to do something cruel, and you went and did it. Is that who you want to be?”

Nobody could compare with my sister. She hits the bull’s-eye on the first try. Right into the knot of guilt and doubt.

“It’s not that simple.” I sounded lame, even to myself.

Nevada locked her teeth and nodded. “I’ll make it simple. Tomorrow I’ll go and tell her to leave you alone.”

Panic smashed into me in a blinding explosion of white. My fingertips went cold. Victoria let Alessandro’s stunt go because she found him amusing. If Nevada marched in there tomorrow and started issuing ultimatums, Victoria would punish her. She viewed Alessandro as my teenage crush, ultimately harmless. But Nevada wielded a great deal of influence over me. Victoria already saw her as a rival. She would act to consolidate her grip on me. She would retaliate.

She would hurt the baby.

“Please don’t do this. I’m begging you.”

Nevada’s eyes were clear. “You’re my sister and I love you. You’re trapped, but I’ll get you out.”

No, no, no.

Nevada turned away from me. She’d made up her mind. I had seconds to stop her. I needed a lever, a gap in her armor, something to make her listen.

“You always took care of us when we were kids. But now I’m an adult. You taught me that being an adult means making informed decisions. I want to tell you something, and if, when I’m done, you still want to confront Victoria, I won’t fight you.”

Nevada turned around and sat at the table. “Okay. I’ll hear you out.”

I would regret this conversation for the rest of my life, but I had to keep her away from Victoria. I pulled out a chair, sat, and took another swig of my beer. It tasted bitter. My adrenaline was through the roof.

“Do you remember when you gave up being the Head of our House?”

Nevada narrowed her eyes. “I remember.”

“I told that story to Alessandro. The whole thing. How you were working yourself into the ground trying to earn money for us and to deal with the threats against Connor, how you wouldn’t rest, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t let anybody help, until you collapsed and we had to call an ambulance. I explained that we begged you to slow down and recover, and you promised to do it, and then less than twenty-four hours later, I found you back in the office rummaging through files. How Arabella and I had inherited shares of the business from Dad, and we voted to ban you from making money for the business, forcing you to keep everything you earned, and then you freaked out and declared that we didn’t trust you anymore and you couldn’t be the Head of our House.”

Nevada’s mouth thinned. She didn’t like remembering that any more than I did.

My sister waved her hand at me to keep going.

“Something Alessandro said stuck with me. He said that you knew we were right, but you didn’t think you were wrong. The more I thought about that, the less sense it made. You rebuilt the business from the ground up after Dad got sick. You put your life on hold and sacrificed for it. You loved the business. It was Dad’s legacy, and you honored it.”

Nevada shrugged.

“You also loved us. You worked sixty-hour weeks and then still found time to be our big sister. And you are the most grounded, levelheaded person I know. Tantrum isn’t even in your vocabulary. But somehow you threw one, and then you got so butt-hurt, you quit the business and almost quit the family. You didn’t speak to me for three weeks.”

Nevada’s expression softened. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“At the time I felt so guilty. I came up with this wonderful idea to get you to work less and stop you from driving yourself into the ground for us, and it all went horribly wrong. I didn’t know what to do. And you were so angry. That same day you went down to the Keeper of Records and officially abdicated leadership of the House. That put me in charge of the family. I was twenty years old. I knew nothing about running a House. Here we were, less than a year away from emerging from the new House grace period, and you dropped it all in my lap. My big sister wouldn’t have done that in a million years.”

Hurt flashed in Nevada’s stare. She hid it instantly, but I saw it. I wanted to throw my arms around her, but I had to get through this.

“I’m so sorry,” she said again. “You hurt my feelings, I was overworked, and I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

I shook my head. “No, you were thinking very clearly. What Alessandro said was true. You knew we were right, but you didn’t think you were wrong. You made the best possible decision under the circumstances. It wasn’t emotional. It was calculated.”

Nevada frowned. “Where are you going with this?”

“About two months before you collapsed, Connor was still dealing with the fallout of exposing the Sturm-Charles conspiracy. Friends and allies of the people whose Houses fell as the result of that investigation were gunning for him. You received a USB drive with a series of recordings showing Connor engaged in human trafficking.”

No reaction. One day I would be as good as her.

“The recordings were graphic and horrible. Girls, barely teenagers, transported in cages, tortured, and raped. You started digging and found a wealth of supporting evidence. Bogus shipping records that couldn’t pass even the slightest check. A secret account Connor didn’t know he had with deposits from a known human trafficker who had been conveniently murdered, so it would look like Connor tried to cover up his sins. But all of that wasn’t sensational. The recordings, however, that was the glue-you-to-your-screen evidence. Except the recordings alone weren’t enough, not when a powerful illusion Prime could duplicate Connor’s appearance. Someone had to validate them.”